Shopping malls simulate the buzz of city centres and create an atmosphere appropriate for consuming. Everything is planned in advance and controlled; appropriation or adaptation of the space by passers-by is both impossible and forbidden. This rebounds on city centres: prettified, scrubbed, and tidied, they increasingly adopt the mall aesthetic. And in a final twist, malls have begun building reconstructions of city streets. [Eurozine]
When it is broadcast on Vijay television to an audience of up to 64 million people in the southern state of Tamil Nadu later this month, “Ippadikku Rose” (“Yours, Rose”) is expected to cause a sensation, introducing India’s first transgender celebrity to television. [NYT]
Is it so irrational and retrograde to base one’s vote on the gender or race of religion or ethnicity of a candidate? Not necessarily. [NYT]
Nobody would label today’s critics of big chainstores as ‘Nazis’. Yet their arguments bear a striking resemblance to those of the Third Reich. [Spiked].
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